The third session of "A Book of Songs and Places" between September 19 and 25 takes the participants to the rural district of Çatalca. The field research trips will follow the Çatalca defense line, an armistice line that is formed by Ottoman period fortifications. The participants will explore the area where the line intersects the construction site of the highway that will link with the third Bosphorus Bridge. The Turkish singer and songwriter, Mabel Matiz, will work with the participants to represent the, epic or mundane, journeys that were taken across the “peripheral” landscapes.

Known as a Turkish pop singer, and songwriter, Fatih Karaca (born August 31, 1985, Erdemli, Mersin) formerly a dentist, uses the professional name, Mabel Matiz. He took the name Mabel from the novel, Kumral Ada Mavi Tuna, in which the character Tuna uses the nickname Mabel while Matiz is a word from ancient Greek meaning ‘a very drunk derelict.” Mabel Matis began his music education with guitar and Turkish classic music classes while at university. He initially recorded his songs at home and put them anonymously on MySpace. After meeting and receiving encouragement from Engin Akıncı in 2009, together with Alper Gemici and Alper Erinç he made his first album of 5 music clips, entitled “Mabel Matiz” that came out on May 11, 2011. He has also written lyrics and composed music for such artists as Teoman, Göksel, and Ceyl’an Ertem. His second album, “Yasım Çocuk”, came out on January 5, 2013.

The lecture series will be continued in the third session of “A book of songs and places”:

Lecture by Dr. İpek Türeli

“Moving Images of the Peripheries”

Thursday, September 19, 17:00-18:30

Periphery is a spatial concept and a sociological metaphor that has had a bearing on how scholars interpreted modernization in Turkey It implies a space within (center) and a space without. It can be defined as relative positionality. For instance, Istanbul is at the center of Turkey but also at the periphery of Europe.

The periphery of the city is typically surrounded by rural land and is imagined to be empty. In Turkey, it was the journalists who first provided “moving images” of the peripheries of the city, photographically documenting how the “other half” lived and why they came to Istanbul (Tureli, 2010). Then, Turkish filmmakers discovered squatter settlements as characteristic of the peripheries and contrasted them to affluent inner-city neighborhoods to comment on social inequality and underdevelopment. Turkish cinema’s dependence on onsite shooting (lacking studios) has meant films remain the only photographic documentation of the rapidly changing peripheries of the city.

More recently, geographical peripheries of the city witnessed the proliferation of gated communities and other exclusive forms of housing. In turn, declining inner-city areas, such as Tarlabasi, Sulukule, have been marked as the new peripheries and subjected to “internal colonization” and “generalized gentrification”. In conversation with patterns of neoliberal urbanization, cinema films have turned from rural-to-urban migrants and working-class urban poor to marginal lives in search of characters to populate this new periphery in the geographic centre. The periphery may not always correspond to actual human habitation. The potential of the periphery comes from unexpected contact. The so-called peripheries emerge as the locus of oppositional politics.

Ipek Türeli is Assistant Professor of Architecture at McGill University. She is also a Creative Partner at DMRLab based in Montreal. She holds a PhD in Architecture from UC Berkeley, and the AA Diploma. Her research was awarded the Regents Fellowship at UC Berkeley (2002-2007. She also received external grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Middle East Research Competition, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University (2008-2011) and the Aga Khan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Islamic Architecture at MIT. Her seminars, studios, and publications have explored vision and visuality, the history and theory of the modern city, activism in architecture and spatial justice. She is the co-editor of Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? (Routledge, 2010; Metis, 2011). This book explores how processes of creative production and exhibition are intertwined with neoliberal urban restructuring. She is currently working on her book manuscript, "Istanbul, Open City."

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Semra Germaner

“Late Ottoman and early Turkish city view and landscape paintings”

Saturday, September 21, 16:00-18:00

Professor Dr. Semra Germaner will present examples of city views and landscape paintings from the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republic periods and explain changes in the feeling of the picturesque.

Born in Istanbul, Semra Germaner graduated from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts in 1967, received her M.A. in Modern Art History from the Sorbonne University, Paris, in 1973 and her Ph.D. from Istanbul Technical University in 1979. As a specialist in Ottoman and Turkish art and orientalist painting, Germaner is a Professor at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul. She has written numerous books and articles about façade decorations of wooden houses during the late Ottoman period, 18th century European painting, European art after 1960, as well as being the co-author with Professor Dr. Zeynep Inankur of Orientalism and Turkey, published in 1989, and Constantinople and the Orientalists, published in 2002.

“A Book of Songs and Places” is a project by Maxime Hourani, a Lebanese artist and architect engaged in a cross-disciplinary practice. Often taking the form of performative actions that relate to a specific place or space, his projects conceptually engage in explorations that excavate and interweave layers of histories, forms and relations.

The project is hosted and co-organized by 5533, an experimental non-profit art space that was opened in 2008 by two artists, Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan. As part of their yearly director invitation program, Filiz Avunduk has been the 2013 Programs Director. 5533’s aims are to host international projects and interactive events involving exhibitions, artist talks, workshops and round table discussions; to conduct art related research, materialize projects, and share these with IMC neighbors, the art community, as well as general interest.

Workshop participation is open to students and practitioners. No musical background is required. If you are interested in participating in one of the workshops, please send an e-mail to bookofsongsandplaces@gmail.com with your name.

(17:00-18:30) Public talk and Q&A on peripheral landscapes in Turkish cinema by Dr. İpek Türeli

Friday 20th September:

(10:00-11:00) Introduction and presentation of landscape and military panoramic sketching techniques by Maxime Hourani

(11:00-17:00) Field Research trip to the district of Çatalca. We will be walking from Örcünlü to Kizilcaali. (Please wear clothes and shoes that are suitable for light trekking. Also bring the equipment of your preference to make your own documentation.)

Saturday 21st September:

(11:00-15:00) Field research analysis and discussion

(16:00-17:30) Public Talk and Q&A on the history of landscape art in Turkey during the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republic periods by Professor Dr. Semra Germaner

Monday 23rd September:

(11:00-17:00) Field Research trip to the province of Çatalca. We will be walking from Boyalik to Kizilcaali (Please wear clothes and shoes that are suitable for light trekking. Also bring the equipment of your preference to make your own documentation.)

Tuesday 24th September:

(11:00-17:00) Songwriting workshop with Singer Mabel Matiz

Wednesday 25th September:

(11:00-16:30) Songwriting workshop with singer Mabel Matiz

The workshop meetings will be taking place at 5533 IMC Unkapani, Please come 15minutes before starting time.

No prior artistic or musical background is necessary, Participation commitment is appreciated.

Now you see us now
you don’t is a permanent neon sign installation by Annika Eriksson, placed on
the back entrance of the 5th block at IMÇ (Istanbul Manifaturacılar
Çarşısı) - the iconic modernist shopping center in Istanbul designed during the
city’s urban modernisation period in the late 1950’s.

The purely Functionalist building, conceived as a “modern utopia”,
was built incorporating the traditional bazaar structure into an experimental
modern system with large corridors surrounding the open-air atrium located at
the center of each block. IMÇ was built divided into six blocks according to
different industries including: garment textiles, interior decoration textiles,
sewing machines and music.

Like a ghost from the future, Now
you see us now you don’t blinks from the concrete exterior wall of the 5th
block as a promise and a threat hinting at its precarious state. In the last
decade, justified as a policy to protect the historic peninsula of Istanbul,
the municipality has tried but failed to pass a proposal to build Ottoman
villas by demolishing IMÇ. Located in an ideal spot, a bridge apart from
central neighbourhoods, an enforced relocation is inevitable and only a matter
of time for İMÇ. When the day comes, the sign will continue its lifespan
alongside it and disappear in the rubble of the building.

Eriksson sets up a spatial situation and distorts notions of time with Now you see us now you don’t. She inscribes an
ambiguous text referring to the building’s present state of temporal ambiguity.
Alluding to its possible demise, the text acts as a subversive resistance from
a frontier between construction and destruction, then and now, also bringing
forth the erasure of personal and socio-cultural histories tied to public
structures of this scale.

Annika Eriksson is a Swedish artist living in Berlin. Over the years,
Eriksson has produced a large number of works in which the perception of time,
structures of power, and once acclaimed social visions are called into
question. Strategically Eriksson plays with the heated debates around the
public realm and structures that regulate it, revealing the urban changes and how
this is subject to unexpected political appropriations and inversions.

“A book of songs and places”
11th to 17th of September 2013 Workshop Program

Wednesday 11th September:

(10:00-11:00) Introduction and presentation on landscape and military panoramic sketching techniques by Maxime Hourani

(11:00-17:00) Field Research trip to the province of Arnavutköy. We will be walking from Hadımköy to Taşoluk. (Please wear clothes and shoes that are suitable for light trekking. Also bring the equipment of your preference to make your own documentation.)

Thursday 12th September:

(11:00-15:00) Field research analysis and discussion

(16:00-17:30) Public Talk and Q&A: “The Tradition of Demolishing Gardens-What is left of the Kağıthane Songs?” by Bahar Deniz Çalış-Kural

Friday 13th September:

(11:00-17:00) Field Research trip to the province of Arnavutköy. We will be walking from Taşoluk to Hadımköy (Please wear clothes and shoes that are suitable for light trekking. Also bring the equipment of your preference to make your own documentation.)

The workshop meetings will be taking place at 5533 IMC Unkapani, Please come 15minutes before starting time.

No prior artistic or musical background is necessary,
Participation commitment is appreciated.

Lecture by Bahar Deniz Çalış-Kural
September 12, 16:00-18:00
The Tradition of Demolishing Gardens: What is left of the Kağıthane Songs?
Gardens are politically loaded spaces and they enable manifestation ofpolitical power. Gardens of Istanbul were destroyed numerous timesthroughout centuries, as efforts for erasing signs of rival politicaldisplay. The presentation will focus on examples in the city of Istanbul, and, will mainly examine the transformation of the Kağıthane Valley. Thepresentation will question the concept of cultural landscapes a well as the continuity of the Ottoman garden culture - as it was adopted, transformed, cherished, challenged, misunderstood and misused through subsequent periods until today.B. Deniz Çalış-Kural is an architect and historian of Ottoman landscape andurban culture. She received a BArch from METU, Ankara, Turkey; a MArch fromPratt Institute; and a Ph.D. from METU. She has received grants from TheScientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (1996-1998) and theTurkish Academy of Sciences (2008), and was a junior fellow in Garden andLandscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (2003-2004). Her work has beenpublished in TOPOS and Dumbarton Oaks publications among others. Çalış iscurrently writing a book on the deviant landscape culture of Ottoman Sufisfrom the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. She teaches at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Songwriting workshop with Saadet Türköz

September 16, 11:00-17:00
September 17, 11:00-16:30

The second session of "Book of Songs and Places" between September 11 and 17 takes the participants to the rural district of Arnavutköy in the Istanbul province. The field research trip will explore the areas that will be shaped by the Kanal Istanbul project and the urban developments in Hadımköy and Taşoluk. Saadet Turköz will work with the participants on writing songs and vocalizations that invoke a recollection of memories from the peripheral landscapes and that reflect on the liminal state of the developing geography.

Saadet Türköz was born in Istanbul in 1961. She performs Kazakh and Turkish songs and improvisations. Looking to transform memory, Saadet Türköz seeks to evoke pictures and atmosphere by means of voice and music to transcend cultural boundaries. She gives solo concerts and also works regularly in duos, trios or larger groups of free improvising jazz musicians. She has performed in numerous concerts all over Europe, in Brasil, Central Asia and in the USA.

Presentation by Serkan Taycan about his artistic work in rural landscapes
September 17, 17:00-18:30

During the first session of "Book of songs and places" on September 3 at 16:00 at 5533, art historian and sociologist, Assistant Professor Dr. Pelin Tan will discuss about the meaning of urban peripheries (by providing reference to Jean Francois Perouse), show works by Sevgi Ortaç as well as examples of practices from different cities around the world and of work by artists and activists engaged in urban space.

Tan is a researcher trained in sociology, art history and architecture. She completed her Phd on socially engaged art in urban space at ITU and post-doc research at MIT on methodology of artistic research. Tan is working at the Architecture Faculty of Mardin Artuklu University. Tan researched extensively on artist run spaces/collectives; she did a documentary film "Roaming around" on artist initiatives in Rotterdam during her visiting curatorialship at WdW/TENT (2003). She conducted a field research on in Japan (2012, Japan Foundation). She directed two films with artist Anton Vidokle on the future of artist run institutions exhibited in Bergen Assembly (2013) and working on the next one. She also collaborates with the video collective Artıkişler and is working on a research about art and labor with curator Önder Özengi. Tan worked as an associate curator of Adhocracy at the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul, in 2012. She is an advisory editor of NOON (Gwangju Foundation journal) and ARTMargins (MIT). Her publications include "Ethics of Locality: Urban Commons " (2013, Barcelona) and "Unconditional Hospitality and Threshold Architecture" (2013, Barcelona). Recently, co-edited a book on urban transformation with Ayşe Çavdar. Tan lives and works in a loft of city around.

5533 is a contemporary art space based in Istanbul. Founded by artists Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan, 5533 aims to create a platform where artists exchange ideas. Located in the Istanbul Textile Traders Market (İMÇ) in Unkapanı neighborhood, the space—formerly a shop—hosts workshops, screening, exhibitions, and performances on a sporadic basis. Each year 5533 invites a curator to work with the founders on a 12-month program—emphasizing two premises: collaborating with other artists/curators and operating without long-term plans.